All of these images were taken by Chicago photographer J.C.H. Grabill between 1886 and 1892 in South Dakota—not an easy time for the Indians of the area.

It was a time of upheaval for Natives. The railroad was being built through their ancestral homelands, the Massacre of Wounded Knee devastated the Lakota in 1890, and their land was being mined by whites with Westward Expansion on their minds.

As Chicago Magazine pointed out, “Grabill’s photography career lasted a mere seven years, but seven critical ones, and his legacy is a remarkable document of America in the era of Manifest Destiny.”

Grabill released all 188 images he took from 1886-1892 to the Library of Congress. Here are 25 of them.

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